On Yesterday

"If there's one thing I learned from Little House on the Prairie, it's that braiding hair hurts," J tells me as he's yanking at my hair.

I'm bent into the mirror, wincing. The finished product is terrible. I laugh and shake my hair, watching the bit that's been braided bounce around, unraveling. I fish two bobby pins out of my makeup bag and put those in to control my unruly bangs. Better.

We're just going to a gay bar, I think, so it's not like it matters, I think. It doesn't.

We spend a beautiful evening having beautiful conversation and generally being beautiful. There's something about friendship that coats every experience, tinging it with the fond glow of nostalgia, even though it's much too soon to have cause for remembering. We sit, ordering matching gin and tonics. There is something magical about the Hendricks; the familiar darkness of the old bar; the rose sitting in front of me, waiting to die neglected on my bedside table. 

There is no sense of time, only a sense of being. 

This is happiness.